Walesa proclaims solidarity with Mitt

GDANSK, Poland — Mitt Romney came to this iconic port city Monday for a prized photo opportunity with former Polish President Lech Walesa that would link him to the hero of Solidarity and perhaps catch the eye of the many Polish-Americans clustered in swing states.

Romney got that and then some.

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Walesa, in a clearly prepared move, effectively endorsed the presumptive GOP nominee once reporters were let into their meeting here.

“I wish you to be successful because this success is needed to the United States, of course, but to Europe and the rest of the world, too,” Walesa said through a translator.

Then, with a bang of his fist on a wooden table, the Nobel Prize winner urged the Republican to claim victory: “Gov. Romney, get your success — be successful!”

Along with a pair of made-for-camera visits to Gdansk’s two civic shrines — a monument that marks where the first shots of World War II were fired and another in honor of Walesa’s legendary labor movement — it was all Romney’s high command could have wanted.

The only hitch: Romney left quite a wake on his way from the Middle East to Europe.

In a Jerusalem fundraiser he held Monday morning before jetting to Poland, the presumptive GOP nominee reprised an argument he’s made before in speeches about why he believes Israelis have more economic success than their Palestinian counterparts.

Citing a book, “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” by Harvard economist David Landes, Romney suggested at a breakfast at the King David Hotel that “culture makes all the difference” to explain why Israelis have outperformed Palestinians.

Palestinian officials, already irked that Romney had declined to meet with President Mahmoud Abbas over the weekend, responded with fury.

“It is a racist statement, and this man doesn’t realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation,” Saeb Erekat, an Abbas aide, told The Associated Press, adding that “this man lacks information, knowledge, vision and understanding of this region and its people.”

Romney’s campaign was deeply unhappy with how AP handled the story, saying Romney had used similar language in other speeches and even emailing reporters the relevant part of his own 2010 book in which he highlighted the “culture” passage from “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.”

“It was a point that he has made and made today about the differences between such countries as Chile and Ecuador and United States and Mexico and that the economic situations for prosperity are interesting to study and important,” Romney chief strategist Stuart Stevens told reporters in Gdansk. “This was not in any way an attempt to slight the Palestinians and everyone knows that.”